Bread and Chocolate Pudding

Do you like bread?  Do you like chocolate? Then you will love Bread and Chocolate Pudding. The pudding part of this dessert is so minuscule; it's the bread and chocolate that really shine.  I dearly love my dearly beloved, and he LOVES chocolate. I decided to make this dish extra chocolatey, just for him.  I add some ... well ... you'll see:

That's right ... chocolate milk!  I mixed whole milk and chocolate milk together and reduced the sugar quite a bit.  It was a great success!

I started by cubing some seriously stale and frozen hot dog buns. It's OK to use stale and frozen in this case because the bread soaks up the pudding part like crazy!  Just think of it as thirsty bread.

Chocolate chips were sprinkled over the thirsty bread. Sprinkled generously.

Then I made the custard: egg, milk, sugar, a pinch of salt, and vanilla extract.

The custard is then poured over the bread and chocolate and then it goes into the oven!  Assembling this bread pudding takes about ten minutes and then it bakes for about 30 minutes ... then it's time to EAT!  It only seemed right to serve this chocolate dish with chocolate .... ice cream!!

In the words of my dearly beloved, "Fantastic."

See other variations of Moosewood Bread Pudding here:

Old-Fashioned Bread Pudding 
Banana Bread Pudding

Chocolate Meringues and Lemon Meringues

I made Lemon Meringues and right after they went into the oven, I made Chocolate Meringues. I have not had great success with egg whites in the past but I was up for the challenge.

The lemon meringues required a little stove time for lemon juice, powdered sugar, cornstarch and water to firm up. I think that mine got too firm, as it was difficult to stir into the egg whites.

The lemon meringues browned too quickly in the oven and I had to take them out early. The result was fairly chewy meringues. The lemon part did not mix in well, as I had expected, and there were globs of lemon throughout. Definitely not a successful recipe.

The chocolate meringues, on the other hand, went much better! The egg whites mixed perfectly with cocoa powder and powdered sugar. The meringues baked for the full two and a half hours and were crunchy and uniform when I tasted them.

Bittersweet Chocolate Custard

Bittersweet Chocolate Custard... a great idea in theory. This batch separated once it baked, making for a super rich, edible top layer, and a weird, wet, slimy, eggy not so edible layer on the bottom. Darn! Better luck next time.

Moosewood Fudge Brownies

The house was filled with the warm, chocolaty scent of Moosewood Fudge Brownies yesterday afternoon. This was my first attempt at a Moosewood dessert and the brownies turned out nicely. I am not hugely into desserts, but I do like to dabble in the science of baking.

The brownies called for melted, unsweetened chocolate, and I unfortunately had to improvise with cocoa powder. Maybe the brownies would have come out fudgier had I been able to locate unsweetened chocolate at the grocery store. They ended up being fairly cakey, which some people like, but I prefer a fudgier brownie :).

The recipe requested that I cut into the brownies will they were still hot, something I have never done before. It seemed to work well and the brownies came out of the pan easily once cooled. As I said before, I am not hugely into desserts, so I think I will dole out these treats to friends instead. That being said... would anyone like a brownie?!